An onging dissemination effort organized by Resource Assistant Director Dr. Kevin Yarasheski is the establishment of an annual symposium on application of stable isotope tracer methods and mass spectrometry to the study of human biology. The first such symposium was held at the Washington University Medical Center on July 18, 1998. The symposium was chaired by Dr. Kevin Yarasheski, Assistant Director of the Medicine Department site of the Mass Spectrometry Resource, and it was entitled "Bridging the gap between ion chemistry and biomedical applications. 15N/14N Analysis bi gas chromatography-combustion-reduction-isotope ratio mass spectrometry." The Conference sponsors were the Washington University Mass Spectrometry Resource, Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Finnigan MAT, MassTrace, Inc., and the Washington University Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism. Scientists from around the nation and Europe attended the conference. The conferen ce objectives were to inform scientists about the utility, precision, and accuracy of GC-combustion-reduction-IRMS for determination of 15N/14N isotope abundance in biological compounds and to educate scientists about the biomedical questions now being addressed with this technology. Conference speakers and their topics are listed below in Table 5. Next year's annual conference will focus on lipid metabolism and its characterization by isotope ratio mass spectrometry. This conference will be held as a satellite symposium of the 1999 meeting of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (Dallas, TX, June 13-18, 1999) or of the 1999 Experimental Biology meeting (Washington DC, April 17-21, 1999).